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| Water cycle http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleprint.html Other language versions: Català Czech español Finnish Greek Japanese Norwegian (bokmål) Portugese Romanian עברית Diné bizaad (Navajo) and no text and guess water vapor (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
As far as I know, no individual or corporation has laid claim to the air
we breathe or the light that stems from sun, moon and stars (though the
possibility clearly exists in this materially-obsessed world of ours). We
accept that these are naturally occurring phenomena that have enabled life on
the planet we inhabit. Logic suggests that water be included in that short
list. It’s a natural consequence of a long-established cycle that was not
initiated by human activity and it’s a substance that’s the very essence of
life. Yet there are those who lay claim to the water that exists in a given region.
My view is that water, like air and sunlight, should not be allowed to ‘belong’
to anyone.
I hear the cries of those who either run or own shares in water
companies, berating me for robbing them of their profits, and telling me that
treated water doesn’t get that way for free. I know. I wouldn’t dream of arguing
that it does. That isn’t what I’m suggesting. I’m saying that they do not and
cannot make water.
We may clean and modify the raw material. But that raw material is a
natural resource and is therefore not something over which someone can rightly
claim ownership. The processing, storage and delivery are those elements for
which we should expect to pay, allowing the companies concerned to add their
reasonable profit for future investment and to pay their workers a living wage.
But, to allow anyone to claim rain, which is what all drinking water is at
source, as an owned resource is patently mad, bad and stupid. So, as a society,
and I am talking worldwide here, we should accept that water, which exists
without our intervention, isn’t a commodity to be traded but a resource to be
distributed without reference to either profit or boundaries.
Treatment, modification, extraction, storage and delivery are the only elements
that should be subject to cost. The raw material should be considered a zero
cost component of such a business.
Logic suggests that I should go further in my argument. Is rainfall a
matter of human control? Only inasmuch as, occasionally, societies have seeded
clouds in order to encourage precipitation at a specific time in a specific
place, with variable success. We have no control over where and when those clouds
are formed. That’s a natural process. It’s true that our activities are
increasingly distorting it, but that’s an accidental by-product of our
irresponsible behaviour.
So, it follows that not only is water not the property of any individual
or company; it isn’t the property of any country or state either. The
water
cycle knows no boundaries. The presence or absence of water in any given
location is due to a combination of natural influences: geology, geography and climate.
Of course, there are man-made aquifers, reservoirs and other capture and storage
facilities where man has usurped the natural product to direct it for his own
purposes. But such activity doesn’t constitute ownership of the actual
resource, it merely permits the transient capture of a quantity of it for local
consumption and is therefore part of what I’ve referred to as storage.
Over the history of our species, we have instinctively tended to settle near
sources of drinking, or fresh, water. The exceptions are nomadic peoples who
have taken their chances and followed certain natural cycles in order to obtain
their food and water. These are stateless peoples who, for historical reasons
often lost in the annals of unrecorded history, have not been able, or allowed,
to settle in any given location. But, for the majority of us, a settled
existence has been the norm for millennia. And settlements have almost always
developed near sources of drinking water simply because its absence would
prevent expansion.
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| English: Mwamanongu Village water source, Tanzania. "In Meatu district, Shinyanga region, Tanzania, water most often comes from open holes dug in the sand of dry riverbeds, and it is invariably contaminated." . Français : Point d'eau du village de Mwamanongu, en Tanzanie. "Dans le district de Meatu (région de Shinyanga, Tanzanie), L'eau provient le plus souvent de trous creusés dans le sable de lits de rivières asséchées. Elle est systématiquement contaminée." (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
So, whether that water is obtained from boreholes, lakes, wells or
rivers, it remains a natural resource. Yes, there have been more recent
settlements that have provided their own man-made storage facilities and
collected or redirected the water needed to fill them. But the water, the
result of rainfall, remains a natural resource, along with sunlight and air. (I’m
aware that my argument can be developed to include other natural resources, by
the way, but I intend to discuss that in a later piece).
It follows that national borders are irrelevant to the incidence of
water. Presence or absence is an accident of geography for any state, since
this aspect of the cycle is unfixed. A city can grow up on the banks of a river
which then changes course. A settlement can develop around a lake which
subsequently drains due to tectonic or mineralogical activity. The boreholes
leading to an
underground aquifer can end up as mere holes in the ground when natural
changes shift the level of that aquifer.
Yes, we, as a species, can and do make changes aimed at preventing such dangers
to our second most essential resource. But the fact remains that the substance
itself stands outside ownership or borders. Something that falls from the sky
in the way that precipitation develops water sources can hardly be claimed as the
property of any person, corporation or state. We are custodians only.
Modifiers; nothing more.
In the near future, water, or its lack, will become an increasing source
of dispute between nations. There are already signs of conflict arising from
the reduction of available water in certain geographical areas. The famines in
parts of Africa are almost entirely driven by changes in the water cycle in
those regions; increased population has merely exacerbated the problem. My
guess is that the problems in Israel are fundamentally caused by the perception
that the most important source of fresh water is growing insufficient to
sustain more than a given population. There are signs that drought will soon
invade the fertile plains of the Punjab in India, making it impossible for them
to provide the food on which that huge continent depends. The western states of
the USA are finding more and more difficulty in obtaining water for
agriculture, industry and human consumption. Not that this has stopped certain
organisations from squandering the precious resource in displays of
irresponsible excess.
If, as a world society, we fail to recognise the basic fact that water is
a natural resource belonging to all and to none, regardless of source, we will
have conflict in the near future. Almost certainly, the next major wars will be
over the ownership of fresh water: man killing man through an inability to
accept a basic truth. Water, like air and sunlight, is a natural consequence of
the location and geography of the planet and belongs to no one and to everyone.
It is time we dealt with it in that way.
